With lessons 1-30 of the Pimsleur Japanese I course we should be able to understand most of the following clips from ‘Shigatsu wa kimi no uso” (Your lie in April).

Goodbye

By now it should not surprise us that there are dozens of ways to say ‘goodbye’ in Japanese, depending on who we are talking to, whether we are the ones who are leaving or it is someone else who is leaving, and when we will be seeing the other person again.

Let’s start with the most famous ‘goodbye’ of all, the formal ‘sayonara’, which is frequently used at school between teachers and students; we also use it when we are uncertain when or if we will ever see the other person again, i.e., it is a ‘goodbye’ with a connotation of finality:

Now, without the finality nuance, the default ‘goodbye’ is a combination of “well… (see you)” (dewa/jaa…), “again” (mata), and an optional friendly suffix (ne/na):

We can combine these few words to say ‘goodbye’ with all kinds of levels of formality, from the formal “sore dewa… mata”, to the casual “mata ne!”, to the very casual “jaa…”.

We can also indicate the time in the future when we will be seeing the person again; in English we say “See you again tomorrow”, or “see you again next week”, leaving the ‘again’ part out as it is implied. In Japanese, we say exactly the same thing but we leave the ‘see you’ part out because it is also implied: “See you again tomorrow”, or “See you again next week”. Nice, right? We convey the same feeling leaving either the ‘see you’ or ‘again’ part out of the sentence, but English and Japanese chose the opposite parts to leave out. If the meeting times are specific, we need to attach ‘ni’, which plays the role of ‘at’, ‘in, and ‘on’, or we can say ‘made’ meaning we won’t meet ‘until’ that time.

Want to specify where we will meet again? Just add it; all we need is to specify the place at which we will meet again, e.g.,

To say ‘goodbye’ in a letter:

Depending of the situation, a ‘goodbye’ is just not enough. It would be impolite to leave, say, the room of a sick person, or a formal meeting, with a casual ‘Jaa… ne?’ or even a formal ‘sore dewa… mata’. Instead, there are certain situations for which there is a very well defined way to say ‘goodbye’; here are some that I can think of:

• ‘o-ki-wo-tsukete kudasai’ means ‘take care of yourself, please’; it is the usual way to say ‘goodbye’ to someone that is leaving on a trip
• In Japan, ‘itte ki-masu’ (I’ll go, and I’ll come), is the standard way to say ‘goodbye’ when leaving a place to which we intend to return, like our house.
• The standard ‘goodbye’ reply to ‘itte ki-masu’ is ‘itte rasshai’, which also means ‘go, and come’.
• ‘o-jama shi-masu’ (present tense) means “I’m going to be a bother”, and we use it when we arrive to a place that ‘belongs’ to someone, like a friend’s house, or a physician’s office. When we leave, we say ‘o-jama shi-mashita’ (past tense) to apologize for having been a bother.
• ‘Shitsurei shi-masu’ means “I’m being rude”; we use it when we arrive to or leave a place that does not belong to any person in particular, but it is certainly not ours. A typical example is arriving late to or leaving a formal meeting in a meeting room or restaurant.
• ‘o-saki ni shitsurei shi-masu’ is the polite way to say ‘goodbye’ to the co-workers when leaving the office; we are apologizing for being so rude that we leave earlier than them, leaving them with their work.
• ‘o-tsukare-sama deshita’ is the polite way to say ‘goodbye’ to someone that is leaving the office before us; it thanks to him/her for his/her valuable effort while they were at work. In a more general way, we can use it to mean ‘Good work’.
• ‘go-kurou-sama deshita’ is the polite way to say ‘goodbye’ to a superior that is leaving the office before us.

And let’s finish with some Japanese adaptations of the ubiquitous English ‘bye-bye’:

‘bye-bye’ (バイバイ) is common among female middle and high-school students, e.g, kimiuso, ep. 1:

 
W.r.t. ‘bye-bye-kiin’, there is a Japanese children’s anime called “Sore ike! Anpanman” (Let’s go, Anpanman!); the villain of the story is an alien called ‘Baikin-man’, where ‘baikin’ means ‘bacteria’ or ‘germ’. Well… when Baikin-man says ‘goodbye’, he uses a pun of his name: ‘bye-baikiin!’, as in this clip of “Soreike! Anpanman”, ep. 344:

 

Thus, ‘bai-baikiin’ has very much the flavor of ‘bye-bye crocodile, see you later alligator’, i.e., it is a ‘goodbye’ favored among young children, or when we are trying to be playful, like in this clip from “Your lie in April”, ep. 20, in which Kawori is saying ‘goodbye’ to Kosei on the phone:

 

Now, the sentence above before ‘baibaikiin’, i.e., ‘sou iu koto’ (so the thing we said) – does not appear to translate well as ‘that’s how it is’ or ‘that’s the case’. However, ‘Battlestar Galactica’ uses a very similar wording to express a similar feeling:

 
As a final note, in slice-of-life and romance animes and dramas, which are 90% based in misunderstandings, “that’s the case!” is nowhere as frequent as its opposite, i.e., “that’s not the case”, or as its dual, i.e., “it’s something else”:

And I went completely off the tangent, but it was fun… バイバイキーン.

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sutoppu, watashi, mite Ep.6

 

• the sentence-ending ‘yo’ means ‘for sure!’ or simply ‘!’.
• ‘yada’ means ‘no way’.

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anata/kimi, desu/da, yo Ep.7

 

• Kawori addresses Arima as ‘kimi’ instead of ‘anata’, because it is a conversation between close friends.
• ‘yo’ is like a spoken exclamation mark.

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watashi/boku/ore, anata/omae, dewa/ja, arimasen/nai, yo, san/kun Ep.10

 

• ‘boku’ and ‘ore’ are casual forms of ‘watashi’; ‘boku’ has a connotation of being respectful, while ‘ore’ has one being manly, rude, and confident.
• ‘omae’ is a casual form of ‘anata’, with the same connotations as ‘ore’, i.e., manly, rude, and confident.
• ‘ja’ is the casual form of ‘dewa’
• ‘nai’ is the casual form of ‘arimasen’.
• in formal talk, adult names are generally followed by ‘san’, those of young boys are followed by ‘kun’ or ‘chan’, and those of girls by ‘chan’.

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-tachi, desu/da, yo Ep.12

 

• ‘hiku’ is ‘to play an instrument’

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wa, ni, mada, masu form vs. dict form, yo Ep.16

 

• ‘gakkou’ is ‘school’
• ‘mada’: no change in context, i.e., he was at school before and he is still at school
• the masu form of a verb is formal, the dictionary form is casual; hence, ‘imasu’ is the formal version of ‘iru’, both meaning ‘to exist’. Thus, ‘Watari is at school’ is translated as ‘watari exists at the school’.

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yo, i-adjective Ep.17

 

• In this tiny exchange Kousei is being very serious and polite, asking what is supposed to be an unreasonable request, so he uses ‘onegai shimasu’, while Nagi is non-plussed about the request and doesn’t see it as a big deal, so she accedes to it casually, finishing her acceptance with ‘yo’.
• ‘yo’ is like a spoken exclamation mark.

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[desu/da] kara Ep.19